UDE’S MAJOR

By Akoiya Harris

A Black woman, clad in bright colors, sequins, and fringe, demands the attention of herself and her audience. A leader, she puts out a call. Her sisters respond ecstatically, embodying her movement with an exactitude that says “we see you.” This could be a scene from Seattle’s Umjoa Fest Parade, where Black drill teams strut down 23rd Avenue. This could be a scene from Bubblin Brown, an annual competition of Black dance in the Central District. But no, it is a scene from On The Boards, where Ogemdi Ude’s Major ran from January 29-31, 2026.

Major’s West Coast premiere in Seattle used Majorette dance as a means to examine Black girlhood, joy, and identity. Majorette is a form that started at Historically Black Colleges and Universities in the 1960s. It spread throughout HBCUs in the South and followed the great migration up north. Majorette uses the full range of the body to convey power and precision. 

Ude successfully integrates this form, traditionally performed in stands to a live band, into the theater. Rather than compartmentalizing her identity, Ude uses post-modern and modern choreographic methods to create a world for the movement to exist in. This reminds us that when we activate all parts of ourselves, our voice becomes clear yet unique. By utilizing Majorette as the movement vocabulary, audiences are reminded that techniques created by Black dancers in America deserve the same amount of respect and attention as any other. Majorette is intentional, rigorous, and requires a high level of dedication in order to be performed. 

Having started at HBCUs, Majorette is a form predominantly done by Black youth, making it the perfect lens to view girlhood through. The dancers move their bodies with full range and freedom, just as a child would before the world teaches them to feel shame around their bodies. Junyla Silmon begins the show with a solo that invokes a sense of play. Weaving through the set, she explores the range of her surroundings and her own body. We know that the space is safe because we witness her trust it. The rest of the cast joins from the top of the stairs, descending into a world made for and by them. 

We witness a youthful sense of ease later in the show during a duet between Kayla Farrish and Silmon. They experience each other’s bodies through a series of call and response. We hear them laugh and offer approval of each other’s movements. They share moments of tenderness and jovial competition. We are reminded of cousins making up dances together. Of girlhood crushes, not fully realised. As their movement flows up and down the aisles of seats, we are washed in their joy. When they descend back to the stage, their team returns to support them. 

Major reminds us that though we are adults, we are allowed to reconnect to the joy we felt as kids. It also tells us that it is okay to acknowledge the multiplicity of joy existing within the heaviness of society. We are “grown” after all.

We as Black femmes move through a world that tells us our bodies are not our own, that the sensations that move through us are wrong, dirty, or shameful. “We owe it to the stewards of the form to uphold the same level of rigor they did,” Ude stated during the show’s talkback. The cast engaged with intense rigor throughout the show but one moment that stood out was the “twerk” scene. One by one cast members began popping and bucking their lower back and butts. They explored this score through different shapes, relationships to one another, and using the set as physical support. They expanded time through durational twerk, an exhausting effort that is usually only seen in a club setting. All the while, Silmon stood upstage, physically still with her gaze unmoved. She was watching the other dancers, she was watching us watch them. Our undulations are a vessel for spirit to move through us, yet in the eyes of the Western world they have become hypersexualized. 

When we twerk we experience a physical freedom that is rarely replicated in our everyday lives. Silmon’s gaze was protective, it allowed the other dancers to use their full physicality without the penetrative force of respectability. The simple act of “laying eyes” offered a force field of care; the dancers were held in their exhaust. When the inevitable exhaust hit, they leaned into their team for restoration; their energy replenished through the intimate and quiet forms of Black sisterhood. Witnessing this scene asked audience members to reflect on how we hold each other, restore each other, and take over when one needs to fall back. 

Music is a crucial element to the majorette form, it being a guiding force to the dancer’s precise moves.  Historically majorette is performed to a live band; the brass and percussion instruments of an HBCU band can ignite an energy and sense of pride that renders a dancer indestructible. In Ude’s Major, the presence of a band was replaced by musician and producer Lambkin. Mixing from a visible place on the stage, she maintained the original role of the band while also reimagining how the dancers could be supported sonically. There were moments of quiet that reverberated with the energy of a high BPM. Lambkin’s work showed us that music does not exist separately from the dance. They exist because of one another. The team is not just dancing to the music, they become the music. Lambkin wove in sonic references that are specific to Black American culture: a church hymn slowed down, a viral video on replay. Easter eggs to tell Black folk witnessing that this piece is a love letter to us. Lambkin wrapped the room in a blanket of sonic protection. We could settle into the show knowing that not only were we represented, we were safe. A breath or grunt from onstage layered dancers’ verbal support of each other reminded us of the extreme effort we were witnessing. 

A powerful moment in the show was when song aziza tucker recited the poetry of Myssi Robinson that included the charged word “grown.”  The poem challenged the adultification of Black girls. Who, besides ourselves, gets to declare someone is grown? When are we grown? How do we contend with the violence of calling a child in exploration grown? Her voice modulated between quiet and loud, asking the question and making the declaration. The statement “You’re not watching me, I’m making you look” was repeated by tucker while sitting atop the shoulders of Jailyn Phillips-Wiley. Literally and metaphorically supported by her team, she announces the reclamation of her body whilst shaping how she’s witnessed. Her power and safety lies within herself and her team. 

Major is a piece for Black folk who love Black women. It allows for an expansive range of experiences inside womanhood, queerness, and Blackness.  In a city like Seattle, where Black people only make up 7% of the population, this type of visibility is more that important, it’s absolutely necessary. 

Ogemdi Ude’s Major ran at On the Boards from January 29-31, 2026. A copy of the program is available HERE. Featured image by Allina Yang.